Winter Hare

The snow is slipping from our house, coming in big, sonic boom crashes from one roof to the next that wakes us up with a start several times a night. All of the icicles that have steadily grown in the full blown Yeti claws are angled like arrows toward a target in the woods, hanging on tenuously til the snow behind it gives way and they slide treacherously to the ground. It's raining like it's April in December, and we are mourning the stunning, glittery blanket of snow that is giving way to patches of thick tire tracked ice and perfectly preserved brown oak leaves below.

These are the lost days, the now-but-not-yet of one year into the next between Christmas and New Year's. Not 2025, anymore. Not yet 2026. Sleet falling faster than a winter Hare, not even sure of the season.

I love these days for their lack of sense and direction, for their uselessness. It's too early for anyone to be back in the office to respond to our booking inquiries. It's too late to send out holiday greetings. Even the excess of leftovers make it impossible to make something new in the kitchen. There is nothing to do but wait for the world to open up again. Author Beth Kempton calls it "the Hush." And this is why these days are my favorite. They are the days that make the rest of the year useful. This is my time to think about the year behind me, to wonder what happened to the time, to let the worries from all I didn't get done cry themselves to sleep, and to nurture the elusive seedling of hope for a new year. Anything is possible. The overcast days make the dreaming crisper-- a blank slate to draw sharp lines of What-Ifs and Maybes and Could We...? It's my time to make an actual blank slate, too-- a new yearly journal. To stack up my favorite recipes and reorganize them, maybe rewrite the ones that have been splattered beyond legibility. To tidy the merchandise suitcases and clean out the business cards, the scrap of paper reminders, the sand and pine needles from outdoor concerts performed across the country. Nature has a way of sneaking into every crevice, and it's good to return everything to its place before the the clock begins again. It's my time to write letters to my friends, like I did in my 20s, and to make promises that in the new year I won't be so busy that I lose track of the people I love and the things I love to do. I've made that promise for the last two years, failing. But this year, it might happen.

Because this year, we are ending on a note that accepts the slowness. I am trying to reject the notion that success is in direct opposition to soul nurturing. It's been two months since we've released our EP, Winter Hare. Since then, we spent our last month of touring singing these songs of grief to audiences who in turn shared their grief. We feel these songs in the winter so cold, we awoke to the inside hinges of our front door frosted over. And I feel them in a sudden early spring rain that seems to be taking away a winter I craved all year. I've been waiting for this time-- begging for it. We've written less than a handful of songs this year, busying ourselves with more shows, more merch production, more miles because we have to make our mortgage, make our truck payment, make our life as artists seem productive and not at all a gift but *Hard Work* so that we are respected and can keep doing the thing we love to do but also pays the bills. We try mashing this career in the arts every which way to match the respectability that capitalism offers. And in doing so, we've missed the thing that is required first and foremost for an artist to be an artist-- nothingness.

While our Winter Hare album is about the grief of a person, we are grieving this year time lost to chores, to-do lists, to being better and doing more. I grieve my constant vigilance, my holding on. I have a reminder still on my phone from 2023 to work up a particular cover song we did almost 10 years ago and didn't repeat. I have a book I made of the progress of our garden that hasn't been updated since our first year in the house. I have a stack of postcards I never sent and grow bent and outdated as they sit in my secretary. In the last two years. I've looked toward the Lost Days as a place to finally catch up on those things. But when there is no practice during the rest of the year to do nothing, trying to cram in a week of productive non-productivity is impossible. Rest takes *practice.* In the same way that our bodies need synapses to fire, muscles to tense, visualization to ramp us up to our various jobs and activities, so does the mind and body need a time of walking around the house and shutting off the lights, the appliances, of stoking the fire one last time before bed, and then letting it die.

Since we've moved here, we've treated ourselves to Reading Christmas, wherein we shut off our phones and gift one another a book, then spend the day reading that book. There's copious amounts of tea and caramel tassies, and we don't emerge until the next day. In the last couple of years, I've guarded Reading Christmas like a stray dog with a fried chicken leg. This year, I did not. I loosened my grip and allowed myself to respond to some cheery Christmas wishes. I allowed time to watch an extra episode of Downton Abbey (my show of choice since recovery began). By the end of the day, I was only four chapters into my book. In previous years, I would've have felt defeated. I'd have stayed up late to finish it for the feeling of Completion, knowing there would not be another day that offered this sort of spaciousness. In other words, I needed to "accomplish" my rest. But since my abdominal surgery on December 3, I have been in a chronic state of rest. I have read over 15 books. I've journaled every day. I've not missed a day of yoga, however gentle. I haven't even worried myself of meals as our local church added us to the meal train, and we've had unfathomably delicious offerings served right to our door (everyone here can COOK!). I'm not saying that Reading Christmas was a flop. Quite the opposite. Reading Christmas was a true day of nothingness because I had spent three weeks *practicing* doing nothing. And my unreasonable demand to commodify, create, and capitalize was silenced.

And here, in these Lost Days, I *feel* like writing again-- songs, journal entries, essays, stories. That familiar bubble that grows within me and bursts into something I make has returned. I lost hours in my studio making a book shaped like a tiny suitcase. I finally got my address book organized. I wrote a song on the piano. Today, I opened our garden book and began logging the beds and structures we've made from the last couple of years. Life is always a game of catching up, after all. But it's deciding what things are worth catching up on. Spotify numbers? Not so much. A homemade book full of our life built together? Definitely. We've talked about taking December off every year. It sounds absolutely luxurious, but then I remember that it's necessary. I quote the Tao so often I've forgotten what it means, but it has returned to me this season:

Thirty spokes are joined in the wheel's hub.

The hole in the middle makes it useful.

Mold clay into a bowl.

The empty space makes it useful.

Cut out doors and windows for the house.

The holes make it useful.

Therefore, the value comes from what is there,

But the use comes from what is not there.

Taking time off, to lose days, isn't luxurious, its' necessary. Not just as a creative, but as a person. We cannot work without rest. We cannot be healthy without sleep. I say that I've forgotten what this means because it has been so easy for me to tell this to other people. I quote this particular lesson ad nauseam-- but not to myself. And when I do, it is to justify a small sliver of time that I watched too much TV or trying to explain why I was still in bed an extra half hour (it was a late show!). And here I am, even now, writing an entire blog entry to rationalize the important component of rest for my creative process.

Yesterday, I texted with a friend who asked me about recovery.

"It's been incredible!" I responded. "I should have an organ removed every December. I've had my meals cooked for me and I've gotten presents."

Her response sobered me.

"You shouldn't have to have an organ removed to receive this treatment."

This was not to say I should demand meals and presents for myself from other people, but that I should ask for them from myself.

Every New Year's Day, I make Hoppin' Johns-- a traditional southern dish of blackeyed peas and greens over brown rice topped with kraut & relish. I invite all of our friends over and have a pot of golden milk that I'd brewed over two days sitting on the stove. We eat and sip our hot drinks, and then we make a fire outside. Everyone takes a slip of paper and pen and writes down their regrets-- what they would like to leave behind in the year before to make way for the year ahead. I've written a liturgy I read each year about making space, and then without showing anyone else their paper, we throw them into the fire and watch each other squirm with the fear that the flame with throw open the fold and reveal our secret. It never does. But the smoke billows upward and we all gratefully stand around and take in this last moment of peace before the year topples onward into Christmas. It's my favorite tradition, my favorite holiday of the year.

This year, I am not throwing the party. Not because I am too busy, but because the reason that Reading Christmas and The Lost Days have not been enough is because I spend so much time curating reflection for other people. It's my job, really. To write and make space for others to think, cherish the time, be motivated forward. But I have not done my job sufficiently for myself. It's a matter of putting my oxygen mask on first. So here, even with a month's worth of time behind me, I am going to lead by example and spend New Year's Day in front of a few blank pages and with a cup of golden milk made for one-- two, including Scott. My doctor has been telling me again and again that the recovery process is long, and it is deceptive. The wounds on my abdomen have been closing up, the bruising receding. I am up and about more than I am sitting, with the occasional hot water bottle as comfort. And she told me that this is where maintaining the recovery process is important-- because though it may appear on the outside that I am healed, it's the internal wounds that are still needing to weave themselves back together in wholeness. A month of rest, topped with these Lost Days, and I am seeing the incisions heal over. I feel ready to send out booking emails, to manage marketing strategies, to make tour posters. And that's where it is dangerous, because it is still the deep internal creative spirit that has suffered damage, and needs more time to heal. I won't be able to see it, when it is complete, I'll be able to move again, not just in the way I did before, but better than before. In the meantime, I will continue to rest. Because this time will be gone faster than a winter hare.